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An anonymous reader writes "Despite being created during World War I, the modern carrier has evolved to be the pinnacle of modern warfare's best and most visible symbols of power. Nothing says 'show the flag' more than a carrier off an enemy's coast. Some, though, have called the carrier a 21st-century version of a battleship — high on looks and weapons but vulnerable to modern weapons. Critics note air-power killed the battleship; people now suggest super-sonic 'carrier-killer' missiles will make the carrier a relic of the past. With their cost in the billions of dollars, some point to killing off carriers as an obvious cost saving measure. Carriers though still have a lot of uses. Many navies, like India and China, are adding them to their arsenal, and they are still feared by many. While carriers might be old, they are a symbol of power that no missile or submarine below the surface can match yet."

Yes. Aircraft carriers == countries grandstanding about how big & strong they are. Politicians like Romney brag about "showing strength to discourage attack" and the voters eat it up.

Of course a better projection of power instead of obsolete battleships or airplane carriers would be the Arsenal Ship I worked on in the 90s. It was filled with nothing but self-guided missiles & required very minimal staffing. Just enough to watch the radar and load targeting solutions. Nothing says "power" like a ship that can launch 500 nuclear-tipped tomahawks in less than ten minutes. Or a barrage of ship-to-air missiles to shoot aircraft carrier attacks from the sky.

And the other way around. Countries that have a carrier, big. A carrier is a toy for the big guy's because it needs a whole squadron around it to protect the carrier and for all your other naval activities a different fleet has to be operational.It is a ship that is a big target in the best of times and a big, cumbersome, slow moving, blind (there is a visual and radar blindspot with a mile radius around it) and hopelessly lacking manoeuvrability all the other times. In order to have one floating around, one needs at least a handful of frigates (all of them equipped with a helicopter) , a minesweeper or two, one auxiliary ship and preferably a submarine or two and a hospital ship.And yes you can try with less ships around it being dedicated to your airstripship... like the Argentinians tried in 1982... and failed...

Nice maritime topic by the way, with International talk-like-a-pirate-day tomorrow and all! How considerate!:-)

A carrier is a toy for the big guy's because it needs a whole squadron around it to protect the carrier

Modern navies are centered around carriers, and 90% of the fleet's firepower is devoted to defending the carriers. If you eliminate the carriers, you also eliminate most the need for a navy. The only thing that is left is the gators (amphibious ships) and subs. As for the subs, SSBNs [wikipedia.org] are even more obsolete than carriers. There has been no justification of them since the introduction of SLCMs [wikipedia.org] decades ago.

Huge special interests are opposed to elimination of carriers. Don't expect it to happen anytime soon.

You forget, 90% of the fleet's firepower comes from carriers (in the USN at least). The four squadrons of SuperHornets plus helos and EA-6 (or Hornet G) on each carrier can perform all sorts of missions (land/naval strike, interdiction, recon, CAS, BARCAP, sweep, SEAD/DEAD. elint, ew, SAR, anti-sub, etc etc) and they can do it thousands of kilometers from the fleet.

As far back as the 60s the US thought that perhaps carriers were obsolete and too expensive and should be gotten rid of. However, the various wars and skirmishes (eg El Dorado Canyon/Libya) have shown the US time and again that the carrier strike group is still unparalleled in mission range, variety, striking power and capability. Hence, the US has 12/13 (depending on the rate of building) and lots of other countries want them too. The UK also though of getting rid of its carriers but fortunately they were around when the Argentinians occupied the Falkland Islands. Without a carrier the UK would have had zero chance of restoring sovereignty to the Falkland Islanders (who govern themselves but cannot defend themselves).

However, on Slashdot the uninformed start with purile "penis" comparisons as if US defense policy was based on this (prestige follies happen in banana republics like Chavez's Venezuala or Qadaffi's Libya - but not in the US; the US follies are based on the economic benefits of the military-industrial complex in each State, but not braggadoccio as the posters suggest).

Aircraft carriers are an important part of global power projection. Without a carrier you simply cannot enforce your will around the World (unopposed aircraft can defeat all ships and submarines; if you don't have a carrier to counter this then your Navy is useless - which is why the Russian and Chinese Navies have carriers mostly tasked with protecting their fleets).

nb: with regard to carrier killing missiles. The US purchased advanced hypersonic Russian missiles and tested/developed defenses against them. Work is ongoing on improved versions of the Standard Missile against ballistic missiles like the DongFeng 'carrier killers' and lasers are being tested against Brahmos and other hypersonic sea skimming missiles. As a result the greatest threat to carriers is not missiles, it is submarines (especially those with Air-Independent-Propulsion, that are very difficult to detect). A torpedo from a submarine also contains a far greater payload than missiles (this includes nuclear tipped torpedoes, Soviet attack subs were issued with two nuke as carriers are so valuable [because they are so powerful] that bagging one was worth the risk of escalation).

So, the manhood insults about navies may be cheap lurlz but show considerable ignorance about modern military affairs and why there is so much activity around developing both naval aviation and counter-carrier capabilities.

The reason why USSR/Russia doesn't build carriers is that because it doesn't have many places to host them. There's Black Sea, but Turkey controls the straits from it to Mediterranean, so the fleet there is kinda locked in that puddle. There's Baltic Sea, but Russia only has direct access to it from Kaliningrad, which is not connected to the mainland. Arctic Sea is full of ice and you need ice breakers to navigate. That basically leaves North Sea and Russia's Pacific coast, and the later is far removed from the core industrial centers.

Additionally, Russian foreign policy is mainly focused on the countries that it immediately borders - which are numerous, and few of which are friendly. So for any potential conflicts it might be engaging in, it can just march the troops in directly; there's no need for an aircraft carrier to project power, and in many cases there's simply no sea or ocean to operate it in.

TL;DR version: United States is a maritime empire, and so control of the seas is crucial to its dominance. Russia is (or at least was, as USSR) a continental empire, and so its fleet has marginal role in its dominance (other than ICBM subs for MAD), and land army is far more important.

I see you are either suffering from ignorance of the simple statistical data, or have been brainwashed. Neither of these are character flaws; they are simply deficiencies. Not accepting the truth after being made aware of the misconception would be a character flaw.

Gee. Reagan and Clinton were almost exactly the same in terms of accumulated debt. GHW Bush was almost twice as bad considering he only had half as long to work with running up debt as either of the former. And GW Bush and Obama were SPECTACULARLY the worst. Obama has been much worse than GW so far, but both are an unparalleled absolute disaster.

Fact: 9 trillion of the 15 trillion cumulative debt outstanding as of the end of September 2011 and accumulated since the founding of the Republic is down to the GW + Obama period alone.

Note: all the yearly figures run from October through September, so they don't quite correspond to presidential terms, but they are very close.

Now, having corrected the spectacular misconception, here's something to chew on. Presidents can't spend a single dime without the House of Representatives budgeting it. The House has COMPLETE control over the purse strings. All the Presidents do is PROPOSE budgets to the House. Then after the House passes a budget the Senate and President have to concur with it; there is a dance of reconciliation between the House and Senate, and then the President just says "yeah fine, I guess" or "Hell no", after which Congress can still override the veto.

"We're not bombing civilians anymore. Fuck with us and we'll murder you in your sleep. One of your guards will have a price. A million US to poison your coffee? 500 million? At some point, they'll crack and you'll die. Quickly, painlessly, and then you're over."

Assassinations refers to political leaders, i.e. killing a country's president because we know the next in line is more willing to work with us. Bin Laden was not a political leader of any country, he was a terrorist, thus not protected by the executive order prohibiting Assassinations. There is a distinct difference and a reason for the difference.

A better solution is a ship full of drones. Nothing says power like, "We just killed each and every one of your war-mongering generals. Please feel free to loot and pillage your weaker neighbor." Which is what tends to happens when an uneducated populace is released from their war-mongering generals, and something we have the habit of doing. But, only after we have supported the war-mongering generals for a few years.

How is "a ship full of drones" not an "aircraft carrier", again? They already carry drones, you know.

Decentralizing the big CVA into several smaller ships might help, or might not, that's a very technical subject. Either way you staill have a carrier group that will operate much like today's carrier groups, but perhaps without the symbol of strength.

But ships that just fire missiles, not drones with a camera and some loiter time, are no substitute for a carrier group. There hasn't been a high-intensity naval conflict for nearly 70 years. Without the ability to observe the target, and attempt to warn the target off if appropriate, it's not a weapon for modern times,

The advantage of Aircraft carriers is more to the mobility of them then any naval battle usage. It's the same reason why we put ICBMs on subs. The aircraft carrier can move to range of where a strategic air base is needed and we can assert air superiority in a combat field without ever needing to violate some other country's sovereignty or secure land within the combat zones.

They do have some drawbacks like the massive amounts of support and protection they require. But this is nothing compared to setting

Aircraft carriers are good for up to, what, 80% of a fighter's useful combat range? 1000 miles from shore perhaps? They're probably very good at what they do until someone uses one of the new "carrier ballistic missiles" with a 2500 mile range that everyone is developing. Supposedly China has had 1200 mile capability for a decade and recently rolled out their 2500 mile range model for operational duty. It won't reach quite to Hawaii, but it's a pretty big aerial/carrier denial tool. Then again, it's not a p

And once you run out of non nuclear missiles how are you going to bomb ground targets?

Carriers don't rule the oceans. Submarines and missile cruisers rule the oceans. Carriers rule the land near oceans, they are portable airpower, which makes them more cost effective than missile boats for air support and air superiority roles.

Big ships are just platforms. If you put large very heavy guns in them they become of significantly lower versatility - you need to completely rebuild the ship to have something without the guns. Aircraft carriers are as versatile as the aircraft you put on them. Need helicopters to support a naval invasion? Use a carrier. Need airborne surveilance and control? use a carrier. Need some combination of air superiority and ground attack? Use a carrier. In this sense a carrier is just a specific variant of big ship, that happens to be more versatile than the previous two iterations ('pre-dreadnought' battleships that were a mish mash of guns, post dreadnought 'big gun' battleships).

Granted, it depends very much on the type of war you have to fight. But that's the problem. Your 500 nuclear tipped tomahawks is a job for war no one is fighting at the moment. You're not going to nuke Damascus or Tehran to get Assad or the Ayatollahs out of power (in fact using nuclear weapons in this case would be almost diametrically opposed to that goal).

Also, it's not like navies are composed entirely of aircraft carriers. The US has about 50 in total, of nearly 300, and carriers (especially the big ones) are hard to make in a hurry, so you tend to be top heavy and have a disproportionately large inventory of large assets - if it turns out you need 50 destroyers by the end of next year 50 shipyards could probably pull that off, if you need 5 aircraft carriers by the end of next year it isn't going to happen. The Royal navy has 80 ish ships, of which two are supposed to be full blown aircraft carriers, a heli carrier and then some 'landing ships' which are like half heli carriers. With that diverse collection of assets some can be carriers, some can be 'arsenal' ships, some can be all sorts of different things, until you know what war you're fighting it's a matter of being reasonably prepared for whatever.

Carrier operations off pakistan for example, related to Afghanistan, are because Diego Gracia (which doesn't actually belong to the yanks) is the nearest US allied base, and it's in the middle of nowhere. Ok for staging disaster relief and nuclear weapons, not so good for ground support in north western afghanistan. And as we just saw the hard way, aircraft based on the ground in theatre can get blown up.

One of the lessons sept 11 should have taught americans is that their notions of 'power' are outdated and whimsically useless, you could have nuked Kabul or Riyadh into the ground in retaliation but what would that have gotten you? Capabilities matter, but being capable of doing something useless doesn't translate into power, and sure, a boat with 500 missiles can hit 500 targets - if you're lucky - but those missiles take a long time to go from off shore to wherever you need them, even if they land in the right place the thing you want destroyed might not be there, or might be too well fortified against the size of missile you can launch. They aren't useless by any means, but they aren't a panacea, nor are carrier based assets.

Anyone who you could seriously want to nuke can nuke back (russia, china, north korea, pakistan), and if they can't nuke you they can at least kill millions of your allies. MAD sort of implies *mutually* after all. And anyone else you don't really want to nuke because you're more likely to get something out of conventional overthrow of the government.

You're right that would be a better show of strength, but then you have the type of foolishness perpetuated by the Obama administration where we essentially go around appologizing to our enemies inviting them to attack us. They know well that Obama would die at the hands of the enemy before he goes to war over anything. Our enemies know that too. See our foriegn embassies for evidence. So all of the posturing in the world isn't going to help when you've already shown your hand.

Really? You know, to us in the rest of the world, there is no noticeable difference between Obama and Bush. None. The Obama government's foreign policy is much the same as Bush's. Same offshore oil wars went on. Same idiotic sabre-rattling about invading Iran, which would be a total disaster and another oil war. It's republicans and democrat voters that differ. Your politicians are all the same underneath, pandering to the low common denominator in the US for votes, and you end up with the same policies regardless. It's a pseudo democracy, and the UK and Australia are not much better. And patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel (that's a quote). Hence I expect no genuine changes no matter who is elected, just a different tone to the rhetoric.

Actually, I'd love to see what Obama can do as a lame duck, when he no longer has to fellate Hollywood to get reelected. That and he now is clear that trying to build consensus with the Republicans is as pointless as inviting Ted Nugent to a vegan Barbeque. This isn't to say that I haven't been sorely disappointed with Mr. O to date. He has done some excellent things, but the real jobs that need to be performed... putting Glass Steagall back, giving both Israel and Palestine a pair of twisty nipples until t

"The Obama government's foreign policy is much the same as Bush's."Te you haven't been paying attention.Bush got us into a country for no good reason except to show up his dad in a vain attempt at parental approval.Obama has been extracting us out of those wars.Do you think he should of just pulled those troops out and left a great big vacuum behind?

Dude, I'd be the first to say Big O is scoring about a C- right now, but you've left out so many fact, your comments simply don't hold water. Baby Bush got us into Iraq to prove something to his DAD. He was put up to it by Dick Cheney who saw endless no competition contracts for Halliburton, and Rove who had wet dreams about building a military base in a country flush with Oil and managed with a puppet government installed by the U.S. Did I miss anything... Oh yeah, the "Yellow Cake" cluster fuck they dreamed up and the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that we never found. Lies and more lies. Are we clear yet? There is NOTHING in the Obama administration to compare, not even vaguely. Even a cursory revue of the Bush Presidency would certainly turn up events that would justifiably end with a firing squad. Obama's a jerk, but he's no traitor. Nearly everything he's done, has been dancing between getting us unstuck from the disasters that Dubya impaled us on, and trying to keep all the moving part inside the bus... (ie. Working inside the disaster that is re Democratic Party) not an easy dance, especially with folks from the right side of aisle taking frequent pot shots at you. The real problem is he should have let go of trying to get people to like him, and pressed on kicking ass and getting jobs done. Of course, it is D.C. and you have to play the game or they make you go away. Strange place we live in.

You misunderstand me and re-reading my post, which in retrospect was a bit over the top, I can see why. Please allow me to qualify that. I'm no US-hater. Quite the opposite. Yours is a great country. I know and have worked with many US citizens and have high regard for them. US technology, culture, entrepreneurship and sheer energy are second to none and I will argue with anyone who says otherwise. The US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are inspiring, great works. It's fair to say that I love your country.

That is why it saddens me to see what the workings of your political system seems to have become. And I don't want to single out the US alone as I said. Democracy is imperfect, and unfortunately vulnerable, but it's far better than the alternatives. I'll take imperfect democracy anytime over any other system. And it requires vigilance to maintain, as Jefferson stressed. That is why, whatever the political persuasion, Americans (or others) really have a duty to speak up when it's obvious that, for example, something's broken eg when foreign policy isn't really much different when the party in power changes. How many presidential campaign promises are ever fulfilled, I wonder? I tend to think John Ralston Saul is right when he says that the old left/right divides of two dominant party systems, like Republican versus Democracy, are really just theatre now, and that all we really get is more of the same.

I think what you said isn't even true of the US, as there most certainly are differences between the Democrats and Republicans (albeit centre-right v. right-right).

In Europe you absolutely do have a left/right choice. Look at somewhere like Greece, you have extreme right and extreme left wing politicians in positions of power. France looks like going from quite right wing back to left wing. Countries like Italy have neo-fascist and communist MPs.

That is why it saddens me to see what the workings of your political system seems to have become.

It saddens, angers, dispirits, and shames us too.

Democracy is imperfect, and unfortunately vulnerable, but it's far better than the alternatives.

Actually, it's not the best imaginable, just better than the LIKELY alternatives. An enlightened, beneficent, incorrupt, infallible, and libertarian dictatorship or monarchy would be much better. It's just that experience has shown that these very seldom come about, nev

I do love partisans though. If Obama doesn't thump some Arab leader with a big stick, he's an apologist pussy. If he does thump some Arab leader with a big stick, why he's a warmongering Congress defier. One gets the sense that it is irrelevant what a sitting President does. If he's wearing your team's colors, he's 100% great, if he's wearing the other team's colors, he's 100% bad.

I do love partisans though. If Obama doesn't thump some Arab leader with a big stick, he's an apologist pussy. If he does thump some Arab leader with a big stick, why he's a warmongering Congress defier. One gets the sense that it is irrelevant what a sitting President does. If he's wearing your team's colors, he's 100% great, if he's wearing the other team's colors, he's 100% bad.

Wow... you know this whole mindset that has been creeping in since the 80s is simply shocking. Okay everyone gather around, because Momma Mary is going to tell you a little bit about history. In the 40s and 50s the top tax bracket was over 90%, that's right, if you made $10,000,000 you only took home, $1,000,000, but wealthy people did just fine anyway. On the other side, businesses believed in loyalty to their workers, people often worked for the same business all their livers, Chairmen were taught they ha

I would hardly call Obama a Moron. It's true that he has done all that and it is true that he has managed to convince everyone that he is different. It's like the guy who gets caught sleeping with his secretary by his wife and not only convinces her not to divorce him, but to allow him to keep the secretary as if nothing ever happened.

I can think of a lot of things to call Obama, a moron is not one of them.

Part of the reason that carriers remain relevant is that, while they do have their own weapons, their MAIN weaponry is the planes that they carry. And it's easier to upgrade those planes (subject to limitations such as the elevators, etc...) than it would have been to upgrade a BB's weaponry.

It would be interesting to see how long they last in a war between evenly matched sides where the carriers are vulnerable to air/missile attack.

It seems like you would need an awful lot of successful attacks to take out a carrier though. The modern carrier has so many defenses, some secret, I am doubtful even a good supersonic missile could get close to one. Even if a missile does get through they are so huge and compartmentalized it would probably not sink.

Missiles alone can not project power. They have to be launched from somewhere - a land base, a ship or aircraft.

Carriers are effective at controlling large areas of ocean and land due to their ability to launch long range aircraft. This allows them to stay out of range of anti ship missiles while it's aircraft destroy the enemy's ability to launch attacks. When you consider that fact that a US supercarrier has a larger air wing than most nations, and that the US possesses twelve of them when no other nation has even one, it becomes clear why carriers rule.

The real weapon is, as always, knowledge. The decisive carrier battles of WW2 were decided by the ability to place the assets where they were needed to destroy the enemy. Lose the knowledge battle and carriers are just great big targets.

Of course, when you need to gather knowledge about the enemy, aircraft are extremely useful. So are submarines. Float a ship loaded with deadly anti ship missiles and threaten a carrier group with it. You'll know a submarine is in the area when your ship unexpectedly explodes and sinks.

No. If a carrier wants to control the straits it wouldn't sit in them. It would sit 100 miles outside in the Indian ocean and launch planes over the straits. This is what's so silly about Iran's blustering. Yes they could close the strait, for a week or two during which the carrier groupings sitting outside the gulf and based in Bahrain, and UAE would destroy every coastal harbor in Iran from which they could launch a dingy. And once the coast has been annihilated the strait demined the whole thing would be over and Iran's abilities would be severely hampered.

Yep. First, take control of the skies. Carriers are very handy for that. Next, cover the area with attack copters. Finally, move in with frigates and destroyers. Nothing will be able to move without attracting a hellfire or SM-3. SEALs can mop up any fortified oil platforms, just like the last time the iranians got uppity.

The iranian tactic of swarming with large numbers of small craft will merely create a target rich environment. Sure, they might get lucky and sink a ship but their entire coastline on the strait will look like the surface of the moon.

Better yet: Just eliminate the men and the planes. They take-up too much room. Replace them with self-guided missiles that don't need to eat or sleep. You can carry thousands of them in the space of an aircraft carrier and project power as quickly as you press a button. No need to wait for waking-up the men, fueling the planes, moving them into position, et cetera. Missiles are ready near-instantly.

Better yet: Just eliminate the men and the planes. They take-up too much room. Replace them with self-guided missiles that don't need to eat or sleep. You can carry thousands of them in the space of an aircraft carrier and project power as quickly as you press a button. No need to wait for waking-up the men, fueling the planes, moving them into position, et cetera. Missiles are ready near-instantly.

"Skynet was originally installed by the military to control the national arsenal on August 4, 1997, at which time it began learning at a geometric rate. On August 29, it gained self-awareness[1], and the panicking operators, realizing the extent of its abilities, tried to deactivate it...."

Part of the reason that carriers remain relevant is that, while they do have their own weapons, their MAIN weaponry is the planes that they carry. And it's easier to upgrade those planes (subject to limitations such as the elevators, etc...) than it would have been to upgrade a BB's weaponry.

It probably also helps them remain relevant that nobody has let a single one get any closer to something dangerous than they absolutely had to since the second world war... The concern is not so much that aircraft carriers are not powerful; but that they are so questionably survivable in the face of today's more sophisticated missiles that there may or may not be an aircraft carrier to come back to within the time it takes for the aircraft to go out and back.

They are better than battleships for beating up on hilariously outmatched little countries, since their range is longer; but that, along with saber rattling, is all they've been used for for quite some time.

They are better than battleships for beating up on hilariously outmatched little countries, since their range is longer; but that, along with saber rattling, is all they've been used for for quite some time.

That's what all US military technology has been used for for quite some time. Last I checked we haven't gone to war with China or Russia recently, and the rest of the world (not counting our allies) is pretty much made up of hilariously outmatched little countries.

It probably also helps them remain relevant that nobody has let a single one get any closer to something dangerous than they absolutely had to since the second world war.

True. Very, very true. And, in WWII, the main dangerous thing they got close to was other carriers. After the Battle of the Coral Sea it was clear that whoever got off the first strike would probably win, which is why the Japanese were in such a hurry to change the loads on their planes at Midway and got caught with their pants down.

I stopped reading when he suggested that current air carriers could be destroyed by "a swarm of iranians flying Cessnas" (I didn't know Iranians had that many Cessnas) or with a German V2 (yes, really). That guy is a joke, and presents any information as if he had a personal issues with aircraft carriers (maybe one of them ran over his mother?)

Because we haven't got railguns yet to slap onto battleships. We'll almost contently see the return of it in our lifetime. When it does happen you can be sure you'll see cruisers with small versions if they can get away with it. But you'll see very worlds military building battleships with those suckers as soon as they think they can.

But let's be honest, despite what the article says, there's a few other reasons besides power projection. Pirates, shipping lane protection, and they work much better for disaster relief than a couple of cruisers. The capacity just isn't there. But a carrier is a city onto itself. Besides, it's hard to get a small aircraft that does tactical attacks halfway across the world to take out a pirate base. Bombers sure, but by the time it's in the air they could have scuttled.

The last credible war we fought involving the Navy was WWII; Korea, Vietnam and now the Middle East don't have much in the way of fleets. Since then it's been more about show and transport. Sure we still go after the occasional pirate or smuggler but using a full on battleship against a guy in a speed boat seems a bit overkill; hell a nuke would probably be cheaper and just as effective.

I think what he means is that we haven't had many naval battles involving ship to ship combat in a while. If I remeber my history correctly, we did use battleships in korea, vietnam, and even the first Iraq war, but only to lob shells onto land based targets.

when was the last time a carrier was used against an enemy which had battleships? since ww2 pacific campaign when was the last time aircraft carriers were even used in battle against anyone with comparable fleet? . falklands war is the exception and even there the carrier groups didn't go head to head.

the modern aircraft carriers aren't meant for fleet vs. fleet warfare, that's not their purpose. they're floating islands not meant to be even anywhere near where they could be shot. for now most important thing why they rule the oceans is that they come with a big ass fleet with them and they're useful for launch bases on adversaries who can't project their firepower thousand kilometers away(where it sits).

Put it in a ballistics simulator and try to hit a target at 15 miles with a projectile that is going Mach 7, or 4,500 mph to 5,600, which is what your site quotes. Line of site for a 30ft elevation to each target is 12 miles, so the ground gets in the way.

To do you would have to adjust for windage in hopes of dropping it on top of them, which is about 1100m (15 seconds of freefall) in 24000m (15 miles in meters), or about 1.3 degrees of angle to land where you want it.30 miles and the angle becomes 5.2 degrees at 30 miles. Pretty fine aiming, even for computers. For comparison, the angle for a normal shell is something like 20.2 degrees @15, and could not hit at 30 with a max range of 24. (I have simplified for no air resistance, not a small impact. But it is a comparison, not an actual I-need-to-hit-the-target number)

What it is really good for is reaching out and shooting down nearby missiles/aircraft. Calculating 1 or 2 second intercept is perfect, and you could use fletchettes to get a nice scatter.

See, I have actual naval training in calculating firing solutions, and while it may be a little rusty after 15+ years, I know what I can hit with a gun of a given specification.

Everyone is missing the point. The real strategic purpose of a carrier is that they are so big, expensive, and have so many sailors on board that to actually sink one is basically asking for all out war. It's the same reason we have 30k troops in SK. It's not like they could stop a North Korean invasion. It has been calculated that 30k troops being killed would be enought to convice Americans to start a nuclear war.

It's basically like going all in playing poker. Parking a carrier no matter how vulnerable is going all in and asking your opponent how bad they want to win.

If aircraft carriers are obsolete, what is going to replace them? Submarines can't project force outside of the water except to launch a limited number of missiles. Sub Carriers were tried by the Japanese in WWII, but were never especially practical. If your planes have to fly across three countries to get to their destination from the nearest airbase they aren't going to be able to offer much support.

Doesn't it seem more likely that people who run carriers will instead look to develop ways of stopping those supersonic missiles? That is the general idea behind the carrier battlegroup already. The carrier is in the middle projecting force, and everybody else is there making sure it stays safe. Besides, the kind of enemies that the Navy is fighting today are the ones that have ramshackle fishing boats and maybe an RPG to scare freighter captains with, not highly technological nation states. The nations they fight are the kind that don't even have a Navy and the only missile danger is losing fighter planes to SAMs.

Submersible drone launch platforms with a mix of flying and torpedo drones. The ship, itself a drone, will most likely travel just deep enough to avoid detection. Sonar stealth tech will help with that to some degree.

Sub Carriers were tried by the Japanese in WWII, but were never especially practical.

If you're carrying drones, it might be a lot more practical. You can fire them vertically with a steam launcher, not having to worry about killing a pilot with G forces. Land them in the water and recover them with a crane.

Doesn't it seem more likely that people who run carriers will instead look to develop ways of stopping those supersonic missiles?

I keep hearing about military laser equipment getting bigger, I figured they'd be coming out with laser point defense, and maybe coming up with a fancier CIWS, maybe with some tiny caseless ammo since in a naval context you have a cooling mass available. (I read that there are still issue

Citation needed - the dieing from radiation poisoning part. If you need help looking up the definitions of words, you might try Merriam Webster. There are also a lot of resources available on the Internet about what radiation poisoning is, and you might want to learn about that. You might also consider learning about the causes of radiation poisoning, and the amount of radiation needed for a person to show any clinical signs of radiation poisoning. You might also look up the amount of radiation needed for a person to die from radiation poisoning, and go ahead and do a calculating about how much DU would be needed inside of the body to cause it. I will give you a hint and tell you that chemical toxicity will be a much bigger factor than the radiation factor.

You might have a point if you had mentioned the possible toxicological conerns about DU (caused by its chemical activity, not nuclear), and you might have a point if you cited the linear no-threshold model for radiation increasing the chance for cancer or birth defects - although the latter is certainly much more controversial. However, both of these concerns regarding DU have absolutely no relationship to nuclear weapons, so there's still that.

There's a bigger risk from heavy metal poisioning, but it's no worse than lead from a toxicity point of view, except that it does burn. In fact, it's even got plenty of civillian uses such as ballast and--get this--radiation shielding.

You are correct about China. The only question regarding China is whether their military capability will reach the point that allows them to become expansionist before their internal issues cause them to implode.

Which carrier has been sunk by a super-sonic 'carrier-killer' missile? Let's wait until a carrier is actually killed before declaring the end of its day.

A carrier lets you park a military city 10 miles off just about anyone's border just about any time you want to. Until something either replaces that function or ends its utility the carrier will persist.

Easy way to deal with it. ICBM. After the boost stage, even if there is no payload, the kinetic force hitting the carrier will ensure it will be underwater quite shortly.

Two problems with that. First, the carrier can move pretty fast. A normal ICBM takes something like an hour to get to target. Even an ICBM tipped with a large nuke might not take one out, if it moves far enough away from ground zero by the time the missile gets there. You need something that either hits really fast or tracks the carrier. That leads us to the second problem. Where is the carrier?

It's not just about the Carrier. Having a Carrier says "Our nation/military is so strong, we can put 6,000 people on a boat and blow up your country from 300 miles away."

The Carriers of today are not the Battleships of WWI. Carriers have multiple defense systems like CIWS (shoots 3,000+ RPM) and Sea Sparrow missiles. A Carrier Group will have some sort of Aegis defense mechanism on board a few ships as well. Not to mention the aircraft complement of 50+. Throw in an E-2C and not much will get within 100 miles of that Carrier.

Not only are carriers sufficiently armed and escorted themselves, sinking one does not win a war. In fact, sinking a carrier is such an overt act of war it guarantees the doom of the attacking government.

Not only are carriers sufficiently armed and escorted themselves, sinking one does not win a war. In fact, sinking a carrier is such an overt act of war it guarantees the doom of the attacking government.

Actually you'd need to think twice about that.

If you're considering sinking a carrier, you're already at war or at least at a war game.

Secondly, you don't need to sink a carrier, you just need to damage it or nullify it's ability to project power (I.E. if you can control the airspace outside the missile cruisers range, carrier is useless, the escorts will need to engage your forces on your terms).

Thridly, carriers are incredibly vulnerable. A slightly damaged flight deck will completely knock the carrier out of commission. At the very least that's leaving the combat area to effect repairs, more likely it's back to a friendly base to effect repairs. That's for the entire carrier group. Carriers seem effective because they've only fought opponents who cant strike back for the last 60 years.

In WWII carriers were quite vulnerable even with all their escorts and the best weapons of the day. Kamikaze and Torpedo attacks did huge amounts of damage. What made the US carriers effective is that the US could repair and replace them faster than the Japanese could replace submarines and Kamikaze pilots. A modern example, if I fire $100 million worth of drones, missiles and manned aircraft and succeed in knocking a $4.5 billion carrier out of the fight that is a victory unless you have over 450 times the manufacturing and economic capacity as me. War is as much about economics as it is about weapons and strategy.

British and Australian Submarines routinely damage or destroy US carriers in war games.

We'll see traditional aircraft carriers go the way of battleships in the future as they get replaced by destroyer and submarine sized variants that can deploy a larger number of drones.

Okay, so I've served on a carrier. But seriously, do we NEED 12 carrier battle groups? Mind you, a typical battle group isn't just the carrier -- it's the carrier, plus a few destroyers, plus a few fast-frigates, plus an attack sub or two. Not to mention the 120 planes in the squadrons -- attack, fighter, AWACS, anti-submarine.

The airships were launched and serviced by ships before World War I however sea planes launched by a cable and retrieved by the same, were used by the Japanese in World War I in 1914, hardly an aircraft carrier but only in the literal sense. Navies around the world used sea planes with battle ship fleets as well but these usually were cabled to the water line the same way.

In 1911, the French had the first Seaplane tender [wikipedia.org] So was that an aircraft carrier? Well it carried aircraft but you couldn't launch or retrieve them without a crane.

World War I was from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1914. In the US we celebrate November 11 as Veterans Day.

It wasn't until the 1920s that they had flat top experiments which is distinctly different from everything before it. You couldn't have dedicated fighters and sea planes were damn slow compared to some of the land based aircraft at the time.

So how the hell do you say that Aircraft Carriers were created in World War I is beyond me!

of an AC is about 10 minutes in an open ocean battle, and we have not seen one of those since the Falkland Islands and that was a skirmish compared with WW-II where the fleets met at sea and slugged it out. The AC's job is to deploy its aircraft and hopefully still be there to recover them to rearm and refuel them and relaunch.

Skip ahead to today. The only country that can put a significant fleet to sea is the United States. Yes Russia has an AC, the Brits have one, the Chinese as well, but we are the only country that has many of them, for what its worth.

There is NO FLEET on the ocean today that can withstand a concerted attack by the Unites States Submarine Force. The Modern US nuclear Submarine is for all intents and purposes invisible and undetectable until it is way past too late. They have the ability to deploy standoff weapons such as the harpoon missile ( 50 mile range ) that are fire and forget. Torpedo's that you don't even want to be in the same ocean with if you are a target ( MK-48 ) that will break a ship in half ( an AC might take 2 ).

Against an opponent that has no naval presence or serious anti-ship missile program or serious Air Combat capability, an AC is for all intents and purposes untouchable. Against the USN? Not a chance in hell.

Yes, by itself a carrier doesn't have a lot of defensive capabilities . That's why carriers travel in fleets which include cruisers, destroyers and subs which are designed to defend the carrier in addition to providing additional offensive capability. Carriers never go anywhere without backup.

The problem is, like people who naysayed torpedo boats in WW II, the replacement for aircraft carriers is NOT submarines or battleships.

It's the 21st Century.

The replacement is small mobile destroyers with racks of armed and unarmed drones, operating in task forces.

The fact that the current brass can't grok that, does not mean they are right. Just ask Canada which provided more actual combat equipment in Libya to take out the dictator from just a few small ships than all the planes we launched from Italy did.

Change is Change. It isn't "like" what happened before.

(caveat - I was only a Sergeant with a SECRET clearance who ended up in a HQ unit after doing counter-terrorism and other ops)

Not so long ago, back in times when a single country still could afford to develop original things (like the vertical-takeoff-landing Harriers), the Brits seriously considered a submarine carrier.I remember one could even land crafts while the sub was almost entierely underwater, but the elevated landing spot (which was a mast in fact)...

Carries more attack and warfighting aircraft than most nations. And we have nearly a dozen of them. Also if you want 4.5 acres of sovereign US territory anywhere in the world in a few days, call the Navy and they send it.

Any one who has any doubts about that should investigate the story of the Aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne colliding with a destroyer and sinking it [wikipedia.org], all 82 crew were lost. The aircraft carrier was damaged but made it home.

The US had two or three at the end of WW2, surrendered by Imperial Japan. Incidentally there was a plan by Imperial Japan to use these to deliver plague infested fleas to the US west coast. These submarines were no joke. The US scuttled them when the Russians, an ally at the time, wanted to inspect them.

US carriers have been routinely sunk by canadian, australian, dutch and english subs. As another commentator mentioned, aircraft carriers are great for projecting power against an inferior enemy, not as much when facing a sophisticated foe.

The vulnerability of carriers has been proven. A very long reach may allow them to outclass other surface ships in a duel, but they are still just very long armed boxers with glass jaws. We know what happens when carriers meet carriers. We expect must the same when surface-based craft hunt carriers.

In today's world there are many weapon systems that can match the long reach of a carrier, although it is (so far) unproven how accurately they can target a ship 400-600 miles out to sea. Targeting will

And when you find them, which isn't really that hard with technology, you encounter a fleet of ships. Not just an aircraft carrier. A carrier, by itself, is VERY vulnerable. But its shortcomings are made up for with the countless destroyers, cruisers, submarines, and other ships accompanying it.

The only way you can attack the aircraft carrier is to surprise all of those ships. A supersonic missle would work on an aircraft carrier for the same reason it would work just about anywhere else. If you can't

Upgrade a battleship with modern anti aircraft systems and a single IOWA class battleship would utterly destroy most nations entire navy fleet before it was taken down. Unless Japan brings back the Yamato, that one was HUGE with 46cm guns that was basically shooting a school bus full of explosives at the enemy.

I see a problem with that... to fight the Iowa we would need to call in the Yamato... but to do that, we would need to recover it from the bottom of the ocean... and it was put there by a bunch of vintage aircraft...

Your words make little sense to me. Of course you talk about upgraded AA systems, but thinking that there are "perfect" systems that make something invulnerable is like thinking that I may beat a marathon runner just by deciding to not slow my pace.

Alot of those ships are getting old. Enterprise is 51 years old. Nimitz is 45 years old. If you stop building them, the number of carriers will naturally drop through attrition as the older ships are retired. There's a problem though: There is one and only one shipyard capable of building nuclear supercarriers. It's not a cargo ship. It's not a cruise liner. It's not even a normal naval vessel. It's a floating, nuclear powered, military city with a hanger and an airstrip on the upper decks. If you don't keep that yard busy building a ship every 5 or 6 years, you lose the ability to build them entirely. Why? Because all the people with the knowledge necessary will be looking for new jobs. When you do decide to build one, you'll be restarting from ground zero; and, it will cost significantly more to build that one than to have just kept the system running at a slow but steady pace. That's the argument anyway.